


Loturaweek 2020

by HaroThar



Series: Loturaweek2020 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Death, Endurance - Freeform, Eternal Life, F/M, Family, Fantasy, Longing, Loturashipweek, New Beginnings, They come back to life dw, but temporary, loturaweek2020, phoenix au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22422664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaroThar/pseuds/HaroThar
Summary: Lotor and Allura are in love, let’s go.
Relationships: Allura/Lotor (Voltron)
Series: Loturaweek2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618732
Comments: 18
Kudos: 53
Collections: Lotura Week 2020





	1. Longing

The throne room was empty.

The throne room had seating for one, a grand chair, a great space, an endless trek from the ostentatious doors to the place where one might kneel, the vastness of space and its stars to one side, glowing architecture of fuchsia and violet, rare stones possessing quintessence conductivity that whole planets were slaughtered for, on the other. Lotor was tempted sorely to have the whole flagship burned, just to rid himself of the problem of what even to _do_ with all this space. It was an ugly reminder of his father, anyway. His pride. His _vanity._ The distance he placed between himself and the people around him.

Lotor was sick of distance. He was sick of wanting to be closer to others, of trying and trying and _trying_ to draw them in. He loved the stars, his home was in the dark space between them, but he had no need to stare out over quite so many of them. His body was too slender for the width of the throne and it was too high, too far, he’d have to shout to be heard.

He wanted to be back on his own vessel, small and salvaged though it might have been, where his “throne” had been nothing more than a pilot’s seat with a few steps leading up to it and his generals could be heard easily, close by and arguing and shoving lightly at each other in disagreements.

He wanted to be back on the Altean castle, with Allura.

Mostly, he just wanted to be with Allura.

He missed her, in ways that largely did not make sense. He’d seen her just a handful of quintents ago, kissed her, even, in the glory and the victory of having _done it,_ of having finally breached the rift, of reaching his goal. They’d harvested the quintessence of the rift, felt it thrumming around and through them, even with the defensive layer after layer that they had toiled ceaselessly to embed in the vessel. 

In those moments, she’d felt so _close_ to him. Although her body was seated separate from him, not even in his line of sight unless he twisted himself all the way around, he’d felt like her heartbeat had intertwined with his, like there was a seam between himself and her and that was the only thing that let him know where he ended and she began. It was like her breath was on the back of his neck, sending shivers crawling through his spine, but more intimate than that, closer, closer.

He had not thought himself wrong, in assuming that she felt it too, and he hadn’t been. He lifted his fingers to his lips, staring vacantly out at the stars, and thought on how warm hers had been against his. Galra ran tall, but never had holding someone smaller in his arms felt so _right,_ and correct, and as though it was meant to be. Like the fates had pieced his body together bone-by-bone specifically for the purpose of pulling her into an embrace. Like his body had gone through ten thousand decaphoebes of travels only to come home to rest in her warmth.

Home, that was an interesting thought. He had, for as long as he could remember, been homesick for something that didn’t exist. There was never anywhere for him to go _back_ to; he didn’t need to burn any bridges since he never returned to their crossings anyway. His only material possession he had kept, the one thing he swore to himself he would _keep_ so that he would never mourn its loss, was Kova, and even Kova, he had gifted to his most trusted ally, his friend. He had no buildings, no ships, no spacefaring vessels he could call “home,” although he could admit he sometimes resided in one a little longer than was healthy for his attachments. 

Everything could be destroyed. Lost. Taken by force and by fire. If he valued something, it was in the abstract, a concept or a habit or a diligently memorized piece of information. He had no home.

Could home even be a person? And was it something, now, at the end of the war, that he was finally allowed to want for? And could he--could he possibly, just maybe, find it in Allura?

Could he fill this vast and empty space with light and sound and _her?_ Could he chisel away what his father left in petrified memoria and strip the empire’s bloody handprints, only to plant, in their place, juniberry blossoms?

Would she want to?

Would she show him how?

Would she take this hollow place of echoes and take all the longing that weighed on his shoulders and lift them from him with her bright blue eyes, her brilliant laughter, her smile that shone brighter than all the stars Lotor had ever seen or known?

He wanted… he _wanted._ He wanted--

“Allura,” he breathed into the space, her name swallowed by the vastness of it all.


	2. Fantasy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A world of their wildest imaginations

“How much farther are we going? Couldn’t you have told me to close my eyes once we were a little closer?” Allura asked, faithfully not peeking, but griping with a giggle all the same.

“I couldn’t risk you seeing it,” Lotor said, guiding her with both her hands in his. He was the more likely to fall, of the two of them, since his back was turned to the path. But he’d been meticulous, as he always was, and the path was smooth of any blemish. He wouldn’t trip.

“Just a little longer, my love,” he said encouragingly, taking a glance behind him. “And we’re here,” he said, letting go of her hands, “Open your eyes.”

Allura did, eyes only on him for the first moment, a fond smile on her wondrous features, and then she gasped, eyes blown wide, breeze in her hair swelling as she took it in.

“Juniberries,” Allura gasped, turning right, then left, then glancing behind her to see where the valley ended, where the earth became too full of rocks for the blossoms to grow. Then she turned back to stare at the vastness of the field, the valley stretching out for miles in any direction. And all of it, filled to overflowing with juniberries. “Lotor, _how?”_ she gasped, stepping forward, her hand coming up to rest on his shoulder as she stared out, eyes so wide as though she couldn't get enough of the sight in at once.

Lotor gave her an explanation, hardly longer than a sentence when it might have taken hours to elaborate upon. It made sense, and she understood and accepted it, and as far as Lotor was concerned, it made sense to him too, even though the words were forgotten the moment they passed his lips.

She whirled to face him and flung her arms around his neck, kissing him, and with his unarmored arms he lifted her, held her, embraced her in return and kissed back. He was in a white tunic, blue and pink accents, a match to Allura’s own.

They ran through the field, the scent of the juniberries so sweet and unique, they rolled in it, kissed again with flowers about their heads, plucked them from the ground and braided them into crowns. Allura tucked flowers behind Lotor’s ears and Lotor stuck them into her hair at whim, feeling lighter than he had all his life. Truly, and fully free from care. They lied in the field together, watching passing clouds, and eventually, Lotor heard soft snoring come from Allura, the sunlight glinting magenta off the ring on her left hand. He stroked the metal of that ring, and stared again at the clouds. With his mind, he was able to change their shape, and that was how he knew this was a dream.

But when Lotor woke up, it was real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments/concrit always welcome!


	3. Endurance + Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I originally tried to make this focus more heavily on the endurance aspect, but it turned into family so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

_”For every Altean head you bring me, I shall grant you one favor,” Zarkon had said, broadcast not only to his empire, but the universe. “Leave none alive, spare no member of their kind. Bring them all to me.”_

_Lotor, at the age of seventeen, had felt those words, what they meant. He’d felt the eyes of the backwater bar he was standing in, too, assessing the structure of his bones, the twin marks on his face._

_He was Altean, too._

“Quiet,” Allura hushed, gathering Akita, only ten and far too hardened for her youth, into her arms. “You know why we cannot do that.”

“Mom,” Akita hissed, baring her teeth, “I’ll be fine! I was doing okay before you and Papa found me, this is way safer than some of the other stuff I used t—“

“I said _no,_ Akita,” Allura asserted, her face hard. 

“Papa,” Akita said, twisting in Allura’s arms to level Lotor with a look, and he fought down the way his heart still thump-thumped in his chest at being called such. “I’ll be fine, you want me to hone my skills so that I’m able to protect myself, right? ‘Being prepared for all and any inevitabilities is a necessity for continued survival!’” She quoted him, and Lotor’s will wavered further. 

“My beloved, she’s making points,” Lotor said, giving Allura a helpless look. “And we’d be right there with her.”

“Lotor, we are not bringing our daughter with us while we sabotage an entire planet’s power grid and free alien slaves!”

“Volume,” Lotor warned half-consciously, weighing options. “If we want her to get into the family business—“

“This isn’t a family business, Lotor.”

“Not with that attitude,” Akita piped up. Allura shushed her again, tweaking the tip of her pointed ear. 

“She’s staying on the transport and that is _final,”_ Allura stated, bearing no further argument, and Lotor sighed. 

“Tough luck, kiddo,” he told Akita, stooping down to kiss her kinky curls. Then, because he couldn’t quite help himself, he added, “Maybe next time.”

Allura glared at him. He gestured at the facility they were about to raid, ears splayed outwards. With a huff, she pressed her own kiss to Akita’s forehead and set her down. “Maybe _when you’re older,”_ Allura relented, still sounding irate. She and Lotor settled their helmets on and got in the hover, a sleek and discreet vessel that was fast, but only for ground trips. It couldn’t handle any breaches of atmosphere. 

“I’m just saying,” Lotor said as he readied the cloaking program, “she is right. We need to bring her along if we ever want her to gain these skills and experience.”

“Lotor, she’s too young!”

“I was younger than she was when I started my physical studies, and from what I remember of Altean sparring bots, I’d bet you did too.”

Allura huffed. “That’s different. That was a controlled environment; the robots were programmed to always stop before any serious damage was incurred.”

“My Dayak wasn’t.”

“And that is a testimony of the brutality of the empire,” Allura said gently, “It will not be how we raise our daughter, my love.”

They entered the facility, feet silent, ears perked and listening. Disposing of the robots was simple enough, between their magic and their blasters. Locating the control room had been done for them, the clever work of rebels they allied with (one of which a charming lad with long hair they liked on a personal level). The problems started happening when a living person caught sight of them, their backs turned to him, and rather than shouting, he went straight for the alarm. 

Fortunately, he was unable to pull it. 

Unfortunately, it was because Akita shot him. 

“What are you doing here!?” Allura hissed as loudly as she dared. 

“You two got caught and I didn’t,” Akita hissed back, pointing an accusatory finger at her mother, “I’m ready for this, I’m not a baby, and I won’t follow dumb rules just because you told me to. ‘An unjust rule made without reason shouldn’t be followed,’” she quoted Lotor again. 

“Stay close,” Lotor ordered Akita. “It’s too late to turn back now, love, we’ll keep her with us and deal with this later,” he murmured to Allura. “Right now we need to move.”

Akita was just as quiet on her feet, just as alert, and Lotor felt a surge of what he could only assume was fatherly pride. That was his _daughter,_ not just that, _their_ daughter, saved from Galran headhunters and so bright and angry and impassioned she might as well have been Allura’s by blood. 

“Alteans!” the foreman shouted at their entrance, recognizing them by Allura’s armor, but it was far, far too late for him. By the time Allura had left him robbed of his last breath on the floor, Lotor had already propped Akita up on his hip and shown her how to rig the pulse device, also a courtesy of their rebel friends, into the main power center.

“You’re encouraging her,” Allura chided lightly as the entire planet went into a blackout, mining operations ground to a halt, slaves suddenly out from the watchful eyes of their robotic drivers. She placed a slender palm upon his shoulder and kissed him, anyway.

“I can’t help it if she’s clever,” Lotor protested, and Akita giggled viciously. 

“I suppose not,” Allura sighed, “I swear, she’s yours by blood.”

Lotor’s ears twitched happily, and Akita wriggled down. “Are you two this gross every mission you go on?” she teased, “C’mon, show me how insurgencies work!”

“Don’t think you’re not still in trouble, you,” Allura said, but there was no longer any bite to it. Akita knew it, too, and sent her parents a _darling_ smile. 

“Trouble,” Lotor said, his turn to tweak her by the ear. 

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be?” Akita asked, and the three left to go cause exactly that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments/Concrit welcome and encouraged! <3


	4. Healing

The steady beeping of a heart monitor woke Allura up. When she breathed in, it increased slightly, so she could assume it was her own. The fact that her ribcage ached was pretty indicative, too. She opened her eyes with a slow, deliberate inhale, testing just how sensitive her torso was, and found it to be alright. Not terrible.

Voltron had needed backup, and she’d piloted in the castle to help, drawing energy from all non-essential functions to blasters and shields (likely why she wasn’t in a healing pod, at the moment), but then she’d taken heavy fire and Sincline had shown up and… Ugh. Her head hurt, too.

Softly, she heard a snore, and turned her head to the side.

There, in the white gown of Earthen hospitals, hooked up to an IV on wheels and his own monitor beeping softly next to him, was Lotor. He was odd, in the chair built for human frames, not half-Galra and over seven feet. His neck was bent at an odd angle, his body slouched down as far as the seat of the chair would allow, curled up awkwardly to rest with one leg stuck out far. Allura giggled to see him so, and reached out a hand.

“My love,” she prompted, and Lotor’s bright eyes were open in a moment. No gentle fluttering, no sleepy confusion, no slow waking for him. Not her Lotor. Her survivor. He’d endured more than she would ever know. “My love,” she repeated, and Lotor’s alertness bled from him easily, face caving into sweetness as he beheld her. He repositioned himself on his chair, then leaned forward, taking her hand in his own.

“My darling,” he answered, thumbing at her skin. “How are you?”

“Aching, but alright. Heart, what did you do to those poor medical staff to let you in here?”

Lotor colored instantly, ears flattening and eyes skittering sideways, guilty. 

“Sweetheart.”

“I’ll apologize,” Lotor said ashamedly. “I, I’ll make it up to them. Individually and personally.”

Allura sighed, and gave his hand a squeeze. “I know you get angry when you’re distressed,” she said softly, “But you really must stop lashing out when you’re in a panic.”

“I know,” Lotor said, curling in on himself further, “I know, I’m sorry, I don’t know what--I don’t know _why--_ it’s no excuse, I know, I just… can’t ever seem to control myself.” His fingers tightened around hers. _”Especially_ when you are hurt.”

She pulled her hand from his and cupped his face. “You’re hurt as well, beloved. What happened?”

“We saw you were under heavy fire, and intervened,” Lotor said, “I reopened a still-healing wound and bled some. Nothing to worry about, I’m hardier than that, but they insisted on strapping me into this contraption anyway.” He gestured at the IV. Allura giggled.

“Stubborn,” she said, tugging on that cute little lock of hair that always curled out in front of his face. “You’re so used to being on your own, you haven’t the faintest on how to let other people take care of you, do you?”

This time Lotor colored for a different reason, and smiled a little when he squirmed in his seat. “I suppose not.”

“Then come here, love,” Allura said, very carefully scooting herself over to the edge of the bed. “Come here and let me fuss over you.”

“Pardon, but I think _I_ am doing the fussing right now,” Lotor said, assisting her with a hand on her upper back and hip, then shifting into the bed beside her, eyes locked on her face.

“Not anymore you’re not, this is officially a ‘fuss-over-Lotor-only’ zone from here out,” Allura said with a pat on the bed. “Now come closer, love, don’t be so shy to touch me.”

Lotor curled in, placing his face against her shoulder, though resting its weight on the pillow. He very tenderly looped his arm over her hip, careful of her ribs and stomach, and when she wrapped her arms around him, one hand petting through his still-slightly-sweaty hair, he let out a mighty sigh.

“My anxious little love,” Allura murmured against his hairline, “Look at you, you’ve gone and worried yourself sick.”

Lotor hummed wordlessly and nuzzled in closer, drawn to her as he always was, and she kissed him fondly. “It’s alright now,” she reassured him, “It’s alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments/concrit always welcome!


	5. New Beginnings + Eternal Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for temp. character death, generally significantly less-fluffy than the other chapters have been

“Please!” Allura begged, arms aching from the strain, yanked behind her and held in clawed hands. “Please, no!”

Lotor stood, heavy chains dragging along the stones he was walked across the dias, bracketed by four grinning faces that held only cruel joy. He was looking at her, face blank with a fear so great it left him shocked, senseless, mute and staggering. He was kicked in the back of the knee and fell to the ground, his eyes still locked on her own, deep emptiness meeting running tears.

 _“Please!”_ she shrieked, “Not him!”

“What lovely ambiance,” Sendak purred, sneering at Allura as he rounded behind Lotor, arm glowing ominously, “Such passion, little maiden.”

“Don’t, _don’t,”_ Allura begged, lurching forward again, only to be firmly planted back on the hard stones by the hands on her arms. A heavy hand yanked her head back by the hair, forcing her to look at the man she hadn’t stopped staring at for even a moment. 

“It is so satisfying,” Sendak said, slow prowl coming to a halt directly behind Lotor, “to listen to the cries of my conquered enemies.”

Allura sobbed wordlessly, struggling fruitlessly to get to him, to stop this from happening.

“Such a pity I never got you like that,” Sendak said to Lotor, placing his giant, metal hand on the back of Lotor’s head.

“Don’t!” Allura begged again, word barely comprehensible.

Lotor took a shaking breath, and although his tears spilled over, eyebrows creasing in, he gave Allura a terrified, parting smile.

Sendak shot a laser through Lotor’s skull, and Allura _wailed._

Sendak gave some sort of speech to the gathered crowd, far, far too many people come to witness the death of the prince. The destruction of the Altean princess’s soul. The rise of a cruel man securing his power with arrogance and a bloody jeer. 

Allura was left on her knees, freed from her captors’ hands but going nowhere. She screamed herself raw on the hard stone, immobilized with the death of her lover, as the audience slowly left, Sendak himself locking the doors of the massive room. Her own private birdcage, where she could be left alone with the corpse of her soul’s mate until the morning, when Sendak would open her throat and send her after him.

She crawled to him, curling around his cold, motionless body, and hiccupped, gasping. She looked up at the moonlight trickling in through the skylight, the only part of the room that wasn’t foot-thick stone, impassible, impossible.

No one had ever survived this, outside of myth.

But if she was to die, it might as well be trying this. Without any other living being in the room, dehydrated so badly her headache had progressed halfway to migraine, Allura slowly shifted. She pried off her clothing, feathers spouting from her skin, shoulderblades cracking and splintering open to make room for the wings that extended, red as blood. The last of her tears slipped down to Lotor’s skin beneath her, and she caressed the half of his face that still existed.

“My love,” she murmured, voice hoarse, “one way or another, we will be reunited.”

She lifted her hand to her breast, right over her heart, and ripped the feathers out. Handful after handful followed, blood speckling the feathers, her hands, the body of her love. Her feathers, her blood, they coated the space beneath her, around her. All over Lotor. Her hands shook, fumbling, slick with her own blood and weak with exhaustion. 

When she could pry nothing else out, spots in her vision and pain lancing through her with every breath, she spread her aching wings out, and laid herself down over her lover’s corpse.

“Ignite,” she whispered with her last breath, the only word in all the Altean language that had never changed, never shifted with dialect or modernization. Her wings lit at the tips, flames no larger than a flickering candle, but the blaze quickly grew, quickly spread. She was engulfed in them, and they burned away the pain until she felt nothing but a calm nothingness. She exhaled, closed her eyes, and resolved to allow whatever would be, to be.

The flames burned hot, burned blue, and a bright figure lifted, carrying the blue flames with it, and, beneath it, freed by its movement, a purple bird of fire lifted its slender neck. The two took off in flight, circling each other, then broke through the glass ceiling, leaving two corpses behind.

They landed long after, hours after Sendak returned and found the princess had ended her own life, hours after the sun had warmed the earth, hours after they might have landed. When they did land, it was together, flames burning into ash and leaving weakened, naked bodies behind.

“Allura?” Lotor asked, confused, exhausted.

“Alteans are shapeshifters,” Allura said, smiling incredulously, elatedly, but mostly just tired, “But long ago, at the start of our time, we were phoenixes.”

Lotor laughed, breathless, then louder, body collapsing onto his side, wheezing around too-strained lungs and joyous incomprehension. Allura laughed as well, her shaking limbs collapsing and she landed on him with twin “oof”s. They curled into each others’ bodies without coordination, without any real thought beyond a need to be close, a disbelief that that had worked, that they were alive, that they were freed from their captors.

Allura touched her fingers to his cheek, whole again, fully present, their eyes meeting once more. “Nothing will take you from me, my love,” she swore.

Lotor laughed one more time, more air than chuckle. “I pity the fool who tries,” he said, before they both succumbed to their exhaustion, unconscious but miraculously, inexplicably alive.


	6. Freedom

The whole universe thought that they were dead. It was… liberating, really. The idea that Lotor and Allura had been lost to the Paladins, to Voltron, to the Coalition and the empire and Lotor’s few surviving loyalists and everyone else who had ever known them--it was satisfying, in a strange way. Allura still warred the ongoing battle with herself to tell Coran she was okay, that she’d made it out of the Rift, that she was doing just fine. Better that fine. Lotor still wanted to radio the outposts he’d secluded so diligently that no information made it in or out without explicit knowledge of where they were and who was involved. Tell them the jig was up. Tell them to live their lives for themselves.

But if either of them did, they knew they would inevitably be pulled back into it all. 

And maybe they would. Maybe, in a couple decaphoebes, they would rejoin the larger universe. Figure out how Voltron had won. How Haggar had been defeated, what had happened to her druids. If Shiro and Keith had ever confessed to each other, if Ezor and Zethrid had run off to become lesbian warlords together, if Hunk had reunited with Shay, if Acxa had moved on from Leiti and met a new girlfriend, if Matt and that lovely android lady had hosted the desperately dorky wedding they’d so frequently fantasized about. Maybe they would speak with Lotor’s scientists and covert operations and share the knowledge researched there throughout the galaxies. Maybe one day Lotor and Allura would speak with the Coalition, the Empire, the Blade, not as spearheads but as citizens, and find a quiet place among society. Or maybe they would be immediately roped back into the politics of it all, and maybe, someday, they’d be alright with that. 

But for the moment, Allura was no princess, and Lotor was no prince. They had a houseboat, which was no more a boat than a spaceship was a ship. An interstellar vessel that was no larger than it needed to be, home to two and a handful of potted plants. Lotor was ardently attempting to persuade Allura into a cat. 

They existed on the fringes of the universe, nothing beyond them but tentative new stars and the ever expanding “edge” of existence. It was peaceful, to know they were beyond the reach of nearly everything. It was fun, to know they could drop down on any planet with a sustainable atmosphere and spend as much time as they liked. It was exciting, to ride that “edge” with giddy uncertainty. 

It was freedom, plain and simple. 

And they had all the time in the universe to take advantage of that. Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! All seven days! 
> 
> As always, comments are appreciated <3


End file.
